


no need to say goodbye

by owlerie



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Time Skip, its a sad one but i promise it doesnt stay that way, iwaizumi in california, kind of. friends to strangers to lovers, rated m for regular college antics but rating may change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlerie/pseuds/owlerie
Summary: an·am·ne·sisˌanəmˈnēsis/nounrecollection, in particular.1. the remembering of things from a supposed previous existencecoun·ter·partˈkoun(t)ərˌpärt/nouna person or thing holding a position or performing a function that corresponds to that of another person or thing in another place.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	no need to say goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> i fell ass first back into haikyuu. its 2016 all over again.
> 
> huge huge thank you to [raiden](https://twitter.com/spaceraestuck) for beta reading this (and for letting me yell about iwaoi in dms at all hours of the night). mwah!!
> 
> enjoy!! <3

Oikawa leaves on the same day Hajime does, both of them toting suitcases through the front gates of the jam-packed airport and standing in front of the automatic door like blocking the flow of traffic will make it any easier to let go of each other. They’re nineteen years old and they’ve spent sixteen of those years living out of each other’s pockets, and Hajime hasn’t yet wrapped his head around the fact that the next step they take into this terminal is the first step they’ll ever take away from each other.

Oikawa hasn’t wrapped his head around  _ anything, _ because it’s half past four in the morning and he’s still trying to blink sleep out of his wide brown eyes. 

Their parents leave them at the curbside with tearful goodbyes and hugs all around, lingering and lingering until a drowsy officer in a garish yellow traffic control vest comes up and asks them to  _ please move your cars, people are waiting, _ and then it’s just Haijime and Oikawa standing there alone, trying their best to drag out the seconds before they have to walk off into the next stages of their life.

_ I don’t think I want to go to university, _ Oikawa had told him, on a chilly evening the winter before they graduated.  _ But you can go, Iwa-chan, that’s fine. _ Hajime had scoffed and smacked him gently on the side of the head, because he had never needed Oikawa’s permission to do anything and he didn’t think he ever would. The brochure for an unpronounceable American college sat in his dresser like a ticking time bomb, buried beneath stacks of outgrown t-shirts, the back panel ripped off and mailed out in a request for admissions information.

Oikawa had broken the news first, that he had gotten an offer to try out for an Argentinean team and planned to take it, and Hajime didn’t know whether to be relieved that he hadn’t had to confess he was leaving first or furious that Oikawa could pack up a lifetime of  _ them _ and sashay halfway around the world with none of the inner torment Hajime had been feeling for months.

“I think mine is that way,” Oikawa says, dragging Hajime firmly back into the present. He’s craning his neck to look at the airline signs hanging above the check-in countertops, bumping gently into Hajime’s shoulder each time someone walks through the doorway they’re still standing in the middle of.

It’s pitifully mundane, the way they bury their seventeen years of friendship into a little lockbox and walk away from each other, but Hajime tries to commit the moment to memory anyway. The air is warm and sticky the way summer mornings always are, early enough that the sun is only just beginning to peek its head over the edge of the horizon. Oikawa is pale and bleary-eyed with a sleep mask that looks like a garish cartoon frog’s face dangling around his neck.

Maybe it’s because of the finality of it all, the knowledge that once they step apart now, Hajime won’t be able to reach out like this for who knows how many years. Maybe it’s the sudden realization that he’ll miss Oikawa more than he could possibly know, more than he had ever expected the first time the scholarship offer had come in the mail and he had spent four hours on his bedroom floor trying to form the words  _ UC Irvine _ in his mouth.

Maybe it’s just because he wants to that he stretches his fingers out and catches them in the soft fabric of Oikawa’s turtleneck, tugging him closer and closer until Hajime can wrap his arms around Oikawa’s skinny frame and press his face into the bony hollow where Oikawa’s neck meets his left shoulder. 

Oikawa just laughs, warm and syrupy with sleep.

“Don’t tell me you’re sad, Iwa-chan,” he giggles, even as he’s clutching onto the back of Hajime’s shirt just as tightly. A middle-aged woman squeezes past them with a suitcase wider than it is tall, knocking the side of it into the back of Hajime’s legs just enough that he stumbles and grabs wildly at Oikawa’s biceps for balance. 

“I am,” Hajime says. It’s more straightforward than perhaps anything he’s said to Oikawa since well before they began high school. “I’ll miss you, I mean it. You know I will.”

Oikawa’s mouth drops open into a soft  _ o, _ his stupidly long lashes fluttering for a moment before his expression splits into a wide grin. “You can always text me,” he says, as if letters on a phone screen are any replacement for the way they would climb through each other’s bedroom windows twice a week for the better part of their lives.

Hajime just nods and forces a saccharine smile onto his face, and that seems to be the end of it.

They let themselves get caught up in the rush of people, drifting apart in the crowd without turning to find each other among the sea of heads and neck pillows and luggage cases, and it’s more anticlimactic than Hajime has ever felt in his entire life.

He hands his passport to the woman at the check-in counter, a young-looking brunette with a wide smile and milk chocolate eyes. Her name tag reads  _ Nishiyama _ in blocky golden kanji. 

“How many flying with you today, sir?” she asks. 

“It’s just me,” Hajime replies.

* * *

The first thing Hajime comes to realize about California is that it’s  _ fast.  _ The people are fast, the cars whizzing by on the highway are fast. The flight is slow and the customs counter in Los Angeles is even worse, but the minute he’s past that, everything around him is screaming  _ go go go _ like his life depends on it. 

By the estimation he had made before leaving, the ride from the airport to the university shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes. Despite that, he winds up sitting in the passenger seat of a rideshare for the better part of two hours, trying valiantly not to clutch onto the seat for dear life as the driver alternates between braking suddenly for bumper-to-bumper traffic and zipping between cars at a solid fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. 

His dormitory is pitifully empty for the first week, but as he begins to unpack the handful of boxes he had taped up and mailed overseas before leaving, it starts to feel a little more like his own room, if not a home _. _ His roommate is a quiet, freckled boy named Anthony who picks up after both himself and Hajime, never intrudes on the other half of the room unless he can’t help it, and kindly doesn’t laugh when Hajime butchers his name the first four times he tries to say it. 

The classes are hard to keep up with but he finds out quickly that his English functions better than he had expected; it’s no time at all before he feels right at home with the handful of study partners he had tugged into stilted conversation on the first day of class, now chattering away near daily over plastic trays in the dining hall or on rounded couches in the library. 

It’s everything he had wanted and more, nearly (very nearly) enough to make him forget the heavy weight that sits in his chest like a stone each time he opens his phone and finds nothing from Oikawa. 

There’s a five hour time difference between Irvine and San Juan, so he tries not to think too much of it. Days turn into weeks turn into months, the stifling heat of California summer morphs into windy autumn and then brisk, dry winter, and Oikawa’s name is so far down Hajime’s list of recent text threads that he has to scroll for two full minutes just to find it. 

Really, he should be more embarrassed by it. He still catches himself sometimes, mostly on bleary-eyed nights when the medical figures in his textbooks begin to blur into mere splotches of color and he’s turned down all the lights but the little clip-on snapped to his headboard because Anthony fell asleep hours before. In moments like these, he’ll pick up his cellphone as if he’s expecting a message, because on long study binges in high school Oikawa would always text him at half past one to remind him about morning practice the next day. He’ll turn to the wall and sit up just a little, as if he’s still in his childhood room with the bed pressed up right under the windowsill and the curtains pulled back enough that he can see clear across the side yard and into Oikawa’s room next door.

Once, after a very misguided walk along the beach with bottles of liquor pilfered from older students and a couple friends from his anatomy course trailing along at his side, he spots a girl aimlessly bouncing a volleyball against her forearms next to one of the ever-present beach volleyball nets.

He’s just tipsy enough to forget that this is a bad idea, that he had stayed clear of all things volleyball in California for a  _ reason,  _ but his classmate makes a garbled noise of recognition beside him and waves her down before Hajime can form a proper complaint on his heavy tongue.

They play a two-on-two.

The girl’s name is Maya, and she has thin blonde hair and braces that sit snug inside her just-too-wide mouth as she smiles up at him and asks if he’ll be her partner. He doesn't have the heart to say no, even though he’s never played a second of beach volleyball in his life and the way the sand sucks uncomfortably at the soles of his feet is already making him regret his decision.

Maya is a decent enough partner, better at moving around on the unfamiliar terrain than Hajime is. They’re all just a little drunk, the bottle of cheap rum capped and poking out of the sand beside one of the net poles now, but that doesn’t stop them from laughing and falling all over themselves as they try to keep the ball in the air. It brings Hajime back to memories of grade school, of him and Oikawa passing a too-soft ball back and forth on the worn-down grassy lawn of Oikawa’s backyard, summer sweat sticky against the napes of their necks and Oikawa’s mother calling them inside for ice water and snacks. Neither of them were very good back then, and the same holds true now, as Hajime and Maya do their fumbling best to connect plays over a court Hajime has only ever shared with five other people.

It’s not competitive, not even  _ good _ with how sluggish they all are, but something shatters just a little bit in Hajime’s chest when he screws his head onto his shoulders and begins his run-up to the net, jumping as far off the shifting sand as he can manage and calling out Oikawa’s name on bone-deep instinct.

Maya sets to him without preamble, unfazed. It’s only when Hajime hears the wet thump of ball on sand that he registers the word that had just come out of his mouth.

“Wow, man,” Maya says, ducking underneath the net to retrieve the ball. In the distance, the waves crash onto the beach in an endless cacophony of sound. “You’ve got a  _ killer _ arm. What was that back there, Japanese?”

Hajime blinks. “Yeah,” he replies quickly, figuring it’s better to lie than admit he had called out his high school setter’s name in a brief moment of drunken desperation.

His classmates dogpile him, stumbling easily onto his side of the court and throwing heavy arms around his shoulders. They whistle and crow about his spike, lament the fact that he’s refused their invitations to play on the beach so often in the past, ask him if he wants to come out next weekend for a few sets and some beer.

Hajime has never felt lonelier in his life.

His most recent text from Hanamaki sits seventeen names down the list of threads in his phone. October 31st, at 3:32 in the morning, a captionless photo of Matsukawa applying fake blood across his left cheek. Hajime had sent back an equally captionless photo fourteen hours later of Anthony trying to squeeze himself into, inexplicably, a cardboard-and-paint diner bottle of mustard.

Matsukawa sits further down with two messages in a row from late September:  _ can I bring takahiro for dinner tonight,  _ then, two minutes later,  _ you’re not my mom. _

He doesn’t scroll any further, even though he knows Oikawa’s name remains firmly in thirty-fifth place. It’s both a testament to Iwaizumi’s success in crafting himself a thriving social life in America and to the gaping, impassable distance that grew between them the moment they stepped into that airport all those months ago.

They had a single group chat in high school. It consisted of the four of them, the only ones to make it through the rigorous demands of the volleyball club from first year to third—an inseparability fostered, Hajime is beginning to realize, more by their constant proximity to one another than by any deep foundation of trust and mutual understanding. 

“Do you talk to your friends back home?” he asks Anthony one day. It’s midafternoon and the sun is beginning to slip past the ledge of their dorm room window, illuminating the furniture in a peachy gold haze. 

Anthony looks up at him with a pen cap between his teeth, highlighter still pressed to the paper in front of him. The icy blue ink begins to bleed through crisp, clean white. “What, like back in Michigan?”

Hajime nods.

“I guess so,” Anthony hums. “I don’t know how it is over there—” he makes an abortive, vague gesture in Hajime’s direction that Hajime takes to mean  _ in Japan—  _ “but I don’t think a lot of us stay close to our high school friends after graduation.” He pauses, shudders. “Bad times, man. But I’ll send happy birthday texts or whatever.”

_ Happy birthday texts. _ Hajime wonders what position Oikawa will occupy in his message list by the time either of their birthdays rolls around.

He gets his answer, funnily enough, in the form of that same group chat. It had sat abandoned since their high school graduation ceremony, notifications muted and the final, cryptic text from Hanamaki reading  _ dude i think i see your mom in the crowd. _ The chat name bears no resemblance to any of their own—Oikawa had changed it in second year to a near-incomprehensible emoticon that supposedly resembled their coach, and none of them had ever bothered to change it back.

Nine months from that final message, to the day, Hajime swipes open his phone intending to ask his classmate to sign his name on the attendance roster.

The chat sits at the top of his messages list, absurd emoticon sitting above a name Hajime hadn’t dared to speak since his first and last beach volleyball game. Five words and a picture are apparently enough to pierce through five months of Hajime’s carefully-constructed defenses like so many little shards of ice. 

He opens the message, looks at the tanned angles of Oikawa’s jawline and the impossibly long expanse of his neck. His expression is absurd, mouth agape and eyebrows furrowed and tongue stuck out like he’s trying to imitate a corny hard rock band, and the familiar figure beside him is no better. They’re both sunburnt and windswept. In the background of the photograph, people in swimsuits mill about on pearly white sand, waves lap up against the shore, the sky is bright and wide and blue. A single image floats into Hajime’s head—a world map he had been tested on in grade school, a thick red line separating the upper half from the lower, the whining nasal voice of his teacher telling him that  _ people below this line have opposite seasons from people above it. _ December is painfully dry in California, and the height of summer in Rio de Janeiro.

Oikawa is unrecognizable. Hajime feels a very small  _ something _ behind his ribcage shatter. 

If someone had asked him what went through his mind at that moment, Hajime wouldn’t be able to tell them a single thing. It’s with all the cognition of a sleepwalking child that he clicks open the chat’s member list, presses the pad of his thumb over Oikawa’s contact photo—a ugly closeup of his face taken in middle school, after he had dropped his ice cream all over the sidewalk and stolen Hajime’s to make up for it.

The line is ringing before he understands the weight of what he’s just done.

Hajime sits like a statue with his phone in his hands, the mechanical trill of the phone echoing off the walls of his empty dorm. It sounds off twice, three times, four times. He syncs his breaths to each one—in, out, in, out. Oikawa picks up on the fifth ring.

“Hello? Iwa-chan?”

Hajime’s throat seizes up. Oikawa’s voice is just a shade deeper than he remembers it, low and husky like it always is after he spends too long yelling on the court. There are any number of things Hajime could say—  _ why did you leave me, where have you been, do you miss me like i miss you— _ but the weight of the last five months wraps tight around his windpipe with icy fingers, and he chokes on the sounds before they can even form. 

There’s a pause, the faraway sound of chatter on Oikawa’s end of the line, vague and foreign. Then, again— “Hello?”

Hajime slams the end call button hard enough that the light-up display wavers underneath the pressure.

Later that night, after classes have finished and he’s checked and double-checked the world clock to make sure it really is well past Oikawa’s bedtime in Argentina, he scrolls down thirty-five names in his message list and begins typing. 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are always super appreciated!! find me on twitter [here!](https://twitter.com/caiedscratch)


End file.
